Mood:
energeticI am excited to travel to Montreal today for my first ever JAQ fest. I don't speak any French and so really feel like an idiot when I go to Quebec for festivals. This will be my second, after having experienced the fantastic TurboFest back in January. Speaking of JANuary, there's a juggler named Jan Oving whom some of you American jugglers should research.
Anyway, I asked back at TurboFest if I could be in the Montreal Gala Show and Pierre graciously gave me a spot. I'm going to be doing two pieces Saturday night. One of them is a piece that I've performed at Texas and RIT with a few minor tweaks. The second is a piece I've performed at Philly and Boston but with a complete and major overhaul. What's exciting for me as an actor and as a performer is that the two pieces are extremely different. One's meant to be a crowd-pleaser. One's meant to be a juggling experiment. We'll see how they go. You're not going to see either one online so if you're interested in the pieces, get thee to Montreal this weekend.
While I'm talking about shows at juggling conventions, I would like to mention one thing that irks me a bit sometimes. For the most part, juggling conventions do not pay performers. Many like Philly create great shows out of volunteers. Others cover the performers' travel expenses and meals. Unless you're a huge draw (Vova, Dietz, Peden, Garfield, Gilligan, Gatto), a juggling convention is probably not going to pay you for your physical act. This is why I wish that more jugglers would use juggling convention shows to test new material. I know that the EJC has open stages every night where a lot of performers try out works in progress. I also think 531 has a similar night of unfinished works. But I've been to almost every northeast US weekend juggle retreat this year and have often been disappointed to see the same act from the same juggler 2-3 times.
Often I love these acts. Vova's robotics. Irish's footbagging. Cate's handstands. However, it gets to a point where your audience is largely made up of the same people and therefore why not bring out that new routine you're working on that's maybe "not quite ready" in your opinion? Personally, I'd rather see something that's new and a bit droppy than the same old stuff that (even if I love it) I've already seen. Juggling conventions are the places to push the envelope, to experiment with material before you unveil it to the general public.
My goal is this: to encourage the creative minds that are already out there (you know who you are) to use the supportive environment of the juggling convention stage to show us jugglers the depth and breadth of your work and research.
I certainly don't pretend to be an amazing juggler by any technical stretch but I am very proud of the fact that at every convention I've performed at, I have shown something new to my audience. My goal as a juggler is to be just as creative as I am unpredictable. When an MC mentions my name at a juggling show, I want the audience to eagerly wonder what I'm going to do this time. A simple and perhaps silly long-term goal, I know, but I've realized that this same air of anticipation and unpredictability is what I feel before performances by my favorite jugglers.
Internal tail-wagging.
